French President Emmanuel Macron was in Marseille as a major police operation got underway. Photographer Christophe Ena/AP
By The Associated Press
The French interior minister launched multiple anti-drug crackdowns on Monday, reflecting the government’s commitment to show it’s serious about tackling the drug trade and crime in cities.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said that police units conducted raids and made several arrests in the northern city of Lille as well as Villeneuve-d’Ascq and Roubaix. He said that authorities are “going to multiply the operations that we have prepared for months to hit very hard.”
The operations were set to continue with checks and searches of residential buildings, Darmanin wrote on X, formerly Twitter. The first raid of the operation took place last week in Marseille. It is part of a broader crackdown on drug trafficking and related criminal activities across the country.
During a recent trip to Marseille, President Emmanuel Macron had promised that about 10 similar operations would take place in France in the coming weeks.